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Echoes of warnings: so it begins

Wasn’t it just yesterday kids walked out all over the country to protest gun violence and demand reasonable gun control actions… which do not involve putting more guns in schools and arming teachers? Yeah, I am sure it was. My own son wrote a brief piece regarding exactly that and his concerns with arming teachers with loaded weapons because he simply doesn’t blindly trust every teacher out there.

Well, now I stumbled across this Washington Post article from yesterday evening. It appears that Tuesday, March 13, just one day before students walked out, a teacher, Dennis Alexander, at Seaside High School in Monterey California “accidentally” discharged a weapon in a classroom, injuring a seventeen year old student. Despite the fact the teacher is a reserve police officer and has had firearm training, he saw fit to exhibit extremely poor judgment by first bringing an unauthorized firearm to class, second by not visually inspecting the firearm to ensure it was not loaded, then by discharging the firearm intentionally in the ceiling when he said he thought it was unloaded. Debris fell on the student and a bullet fragment lodged in his neck. The teacher further demonstrated poor judgment by not dismissing the injured student to be seen by medical staff, dismissing the class or even reporting the incident. The parents had to call the police to initiate an investigation and, after school, take their son to the emergency room for treatment where the bullet fragment was removed from his neck. The school did not notify the parents.

So, not only did this teacher exhibit poor judgment, but the entire school did as well. They did not notify the police nor the parents of the children affected. Reports indicate two additional students had minor injuries from falling debris.

In an echo of my warning from yesterday, trusting a teacher to teach is one thing, trusting a teacher with a loaded gun in a classroom is completely different. Who knows what was in his head that he thought this was appropriate behavior? Using a loaded gun as a prop in a safety class shows no trace of responsibility. If he just had to use a real gun, why not make sure it was unloaded before he brought it to school? Why not use a perfectly and always safe toy gun?

This is Exhibit 1 in why arming teachers is a bad idea. This accident could have been far more tragic. Thankfully it wasn’t, but we need to learn from it quickly. This was in the hands of someone who was trained, more training than teachers would likely receive. Introducing more guns into classrooms is just stupid. It endangers our students because we cannot regulate stupidity. We cannot regulate poor decisions and irresponsibility to the scale of every classroom in the United States. We cannot trust every school and school district to act responsibly.

So, can we please just return to reality and have a reasonable discussion about responsible gun control measures and stop placating to the NRA wet dreams of the Old West?